Native 16-core Opteron appears in AMD document

A mysterious new processor has appeared in an official AMD document. German site Planet3DNow first spotted the reference to the eight-module, 16-core part in a software optimization guide (PDF) available on AMD's website. The following excerpt can be found on page 197:

Newer models of Family 15h processors offer five links for connections to I/O and other processors. Of the five links, one link suports PCIe 3.0, two support coherent Hypertransport, and two are capable of either coherent Hypertransport or PCIe 3.0. These processors have 8 compute units (16 cores). Figure 14 shows a schematic of a single processor node.

The emphasis is ours, and the associated diagram seems to confirm that all those cores reside on the same die.

There are several 16-core products in AMD's Opteron lineup already, but they're all based on dual-die designs with two eight-core chips squeezed onto the same package. We haven't seen a native implementation like this before. The incoming Warsaw refresh doesn't change the dual-die dynamic, either.

AMD's Opteron roadmap shows 16-core Warsaw chips persisting through 2014. If a Steamroller refresh is in the cards, we probably won't see it until 2015 at the earliest. Perhaps we'll also see a derivative of the chip make its way to the desktop to replace Socket AM3+. That wouldn't come until 2015, either, since AMD has no plans for a Steamroller-based AM3+ update this year